If my hand had slipped from yours
by Preminiscence
Summary: "Love doesn't have to die through the severing of life, and although I was aware of that, it was you who made me understand it. America, you broke me." Short retrospective one-shot from England's POV.


**A/N: **Hetalia is Hima's, and this was partially inspired by a comic on tumblr that I read.

This screwed up my formatting, and there is nothing I can do to fix it, save for many heartfelt glares at the screen.

Also, any remaining spelling/grammar mistakes are mine.

* * *

You broke me.

It sounds silly, doesn't it? Why should _you_ be able to break _me?_

I think, really, it was because you made me care; or rather, I cared for you in a way I couldn't care for any other. Perhaps, I thought at first, my love for you came from a need for love, after Elizabeth's death - a love that would not die, because _you_ would not die.

But you proved me wrong. Love doesn't have to die through the severing of life, and although I was aware of that, it was _you_ who made me understand it.

America, you broke me.

I was afraid to admit it at first, that you could do such a thing, you out of anyone and everyone; but it made sense. I who isolates myself by choice from those around me, and yet gives far too much to one child, a child who grows up too quickly and who rips away from my chest as if I had dropped you - or as if my hand had slipped from yours, dangling you always over a cliff, time ticking by and by. And then, of course, soon enough you would loosen your fingers, let them slip from between mine, and I would be unsure whether it was 'noble' of you, or done out of spite.

Rain highlights misery well, and I know it equally so. It rains a lot, on my land, and I am used to it, and used to the misery of centuries, over a thousand, but I was not used to the pain _you_ put me through. For it was a different kind, America, a deeper, rawer kind.

It hurt not only my people, ripped not only a colony from me as a nation, but it dug into me deeper - into my personal self.

For, America, I had always loved you, perhaps as soon as you had smiled at me, in a way no-one before you had, and I had loved you as _myself_ as well as a nation.

There was always supposed to be a distinguishing line, but with you and _for_ you it was hard, and I could not extract myself from it; drew you in and mussed you up in complexities I wish you'd never known, but have made you what you are.

I held one arm open, I know, while the other held a chain from behind, a rope ever tightening, a shackle unseen until it became too tight. Whatever you wish to call it, both were mine and both were different parts of me.

It's hard to have an Empire like mine, hard to keep hold of it and care for it and those within and under it; I could not be there for you as much as I wished, for the world had changed since I was young, and to survive you had to be cruel in return. It's the way of this Earth, America, and I didn't want to expose you to it so nakedly so soon.

I am no longer your armour, or your prison bars. Once I called you brother as I searched for a term that suited you; what were you to me? Did you replace the love I had rejected and fought against, or had never found? Were all the hardships of my younger life brought on by me, or had I not distinguished between the nations and the boys, like I didn't with you.

America, I loved you, and could not lose you.

When I signed that paper to 'set you free', I think I may have told you that I hated you, but what I hated was the loss of you. I lost you as I did her, _unwillingly_, and with you the pain was rawer because I felt, at the time, that I could have prevented it, could have kept you.

It was not an inescapable end.

I saw you later, of course, in those dreadful wars, and although things were on occasion tense between us, I still loved you, still cared for more than I would like to admit. I had lost you, in a way, you see - but you were still _there_.

That made all the difference. That was everything. You were there, and smiling, and _living and laughing - _you were beautiful in the naivety of some of your actions; and in others, when sensibility and solemness won out, you were every bit that powerful nation you had once claimed to me that you would become.

I found out, at the end of the Second World War, that I was proud of you.

I was proud of what you had become, and whatever small part I'd had in it (I like to claim, as you know, so much as your upbringing as my own, and while it's true, there was also that time when I was not there for you, not in the same way, and so your development there is yours alone).

I see you sometimes, flag in hand as your national anthem blares out, looking so awed by the adoration in your people's hearts, and I'm glad for you. Where once I hated what you were trying to achieve, now I look upon it and I know there's nothing that I should change, even if I could.

On occasion I find that your laugh, your _presence_ in this world, whether exasperating or otherwise, is so welcome to me that I find joy merely by seeing your landmass on a globe.

What could I do without you now, America?

You broke me once, my beloved Alfred, but I think - very slowly - you are fixing what you broke.

Because I suppose I broke myself as much as you did, and I suppose I must take responsibility for pouring my heart out so longingly when we are nations; with us things are meant to be broken.

Not to spin an over-used ending, America, but I think I have to thank you. In ways, we etched each other out, parts of us, and in retrospect I would not have liked to have kept you bound to me when you were so obviously never meant to be. The both of us are, probably, better for it.

America... I'm not too good at farewells, as you well know, so let's not make this one. Shall we greet the future as I've never done the past (which I hoard over and examine as if it's got every edge of me engraved into it)?

Shall we look to the skies, now, my love, and for a moment I will forget we ever parted, or were ever separate, or were ever nations with responsibilities and repercussions - or that we were ever people in different bodies.

I shall feel your hand in mine, my precious creature. I shall feel the heat of your fingertips, the roughness of your palm. I shall close my eyes and let myself be fixed by the knowledge that moments like these shall always be mine; ours.

We'll never be ended, so long as our history is intertwined. Its words fix us as they broke us. Tie us together indefinitely and create bonds so tight we shall never escape them.

It will be in this that I shall find my comfort, and nothing shall take it from me, or from you.


End file.
